I really do not understand the mentality here. If the guy hated a specfic person and wanted to kill them, I can understand that. Similarly if he hated himself and wanted to die, I can understand that. I may not agree with either of those.
I just don't get the randomly shooting at strangers thing. What was the point? Is the guy just a complete nutjob?

Mental disease is more common than a lot of people realise, someone doesn't have to be a stark raving loony shouting about purple skies and how the babies will eat the wizard to have a mental illness, it can be something simple like a small obsession or a compulsive need to argue and to always be right. Many people suffer from more serious mental illnesses but go throughout life never being diagnosed and with no one ever knowing, they appear perfectly normal and sometimes these people will just snap for no apparent reason.

Sadly gun control focuses too much on banning small inanimate machines and taking them away from perfectly normal law abiding citizens ('cos seriously, if you are liable to do something criminal anyway, do you really give a damn what the law says about owning guns) instead of focusing on the people who are allowed to buy them.

Ya I meant it's ironic how if the guy is muslim, then he's a terrorist, but if he's white then he's just mentally ill.

Originally Posted by Stuyvesant

^ Lol, so no white muslims?

It's a difference between the motives, I guess. Quite possibly this guy is a terrorist and I'd say that a lot of suicide bomber-types are mentally disturbed as well.

yeah, what stuy said! And even if he were muslim, they probably would´ve checked for any terrorist connections etc. But I guess the media would have blown this out of proportions anyway, so I see where you´re coming from..

@98, there is no fricking need to have a assault weapon, legal or not. It would of been a lot harder for this guy to get his hands on guns, if he had to go through a black market dealer.

And how do you define an assault weapon? Functionally there is no difference between an AR15 (that he used) and a semi-auto hunting rifle like a mini14. The point of my post is that you are demonising an inanimate object that is safely used by millions of people rather than the guy who decided to go out of his way to mass murder people, how he chose to do it is neither here nor there. You say it would have been more difficult for him, but it would have been far easier and cheaper for him to use pipe bombs, hell you can buy explosives on amazon.

Hell you demonise the "assault weapon", but the damn thing mercifully jammed because he used a high capacity magazine. Arguably he would have killed more people with a hunting rifle.